The Shaded Soul
by iamphantomgirl
Summary: Her husband murdered before her eyes, Christine waits for Erik to come and claim what he so foolishly believes belongs to him. As he taunts her from the shadows, her anger grows until she begins to plan revenge of her own. But when she finds him, all is not what it seems.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

He was dead. I knelt at my husband's side as he took his last breath, and knew a sudden grief – an incomparable flood of devastation. Raoul's blue eyes, so intense and beautiful in life, were filled with death…their hue now as lifeless as the rest of him. I'd had no time to prepare for this. It was not supposed to end this way between us. The darkness had finally receded, and our lives had begun together so brilliantly, only to shatter again. When he died, my hope died with him. I had forever lost the boy who fetched my scarf from the sea, whose laughing eyes and wonderful smile had brought me from the deepest despair. I had lost him before he died in my arms through pride and sheer stubbornness. He made me feel ordinary – oddly enough – that _I _would need to feel that way. He had never judged my needs, which always overpowered his own.

Behind me Raoul's parents collapsed against each other, his mother wailing incoherent words; his father sobbing quietly. I had no one to comfort me. I held his cold, lifeless hand as a burning ball of emotion threatened to choke me. Blood soaked into my gown and seeped into my skin.I wanted to die with him. I wanted to strike him. To shout at him and demand to know why he had been so careless. It had been my idea to return to Paris, and he had been so eager I had pushed away any thoughts of danger. I had been offered a position at the newly rebuilt Paris Opera, but Raoul had made me promise that I would not accept it, at the same time believing that it would be a perfect time to return to Paris. He had reasoned that if Erik had wanted me, he would never have let me leave, or would have pursued me to the ends of the earth, but there was no sense in tempting fate a second time.

Instead, Erik had waited patiently until we returned, and then killed my husband as he was leaving the theater with me. It had been a shadow, a creeping terror that moved so quickly and stealthily that we had not known what happened until it was done. A knife wound in the lower back that had gone deep. I recalled in sharp clarity Raoul's cry of anguish – his look of pain and bewilderment as he fell. The shadow ripped at Raoul's hand, and I caught a flash of gold as his wedding ring disappeared. His last words died in his throat with him, and then a vacant stare as his soul passed on to some other place. My eyes lifted to the dark night, as if I could make out Erik's shape. I had heard laughter as the shade passed me by, dark laughter that had floated down into my soul.I imagined him watching me, pleased to have finally removed his rival permanently. How he must have planned this – so meticulously timed. We had only been in Paris for two days, and this the only time that we left the estate. I watched the shadows as the gendarmes came and questioned us all – I watched them as they placed his body in the back of a wagon, and again as they placed it in the mausoleum. I kept one eye on the shadows, watching for Erik, and waiting for him to come for me.

It was an endless wait. When he did not make his demands on me, I began to wonder if he merely wanted to punish me. To show me how it felt to lose someone you loved with your entire being. A year passed, then another, and another, and still I waited, wondering when it would be. When he would come for me.

My time was not spent idly. Returning to the theater was a marked success, but not an easy one. I had been away for too long – no one had forgotten my story, but my voice had faded from their memory. Each time I stepped on stage, I wondered if he was watching. I wondered why he did not come, and worried that I had been wrong, after all – or that perhaps something had happened and I had somehow lost him too. I relived that moment on the street where my husband had died, endlessly, until I was no longer certain what was real and what my imagination had conjured.

Nearly four years to the day that Raoul died, his mother succumbed to some previously unrecognized heart ailment, leaving Raoul's father alone, with the exception of one daughter and her husband – and of course, me. I think, perhaps, I would have gone mad if a letter had not arrived which confirmed all of my suspicions.

_My dearest Christine,_

_My sincerest condolences on the loss of your loved ones. Do you miss me?_

-_O.G._

I shuddered upon reading that note, and promptly burned it, though it was the first of many. For another six months they came, congratulating me on this performance or that – giving me no clues to where he might be, or if I might soon see him again. A dozen times I traversed alone the cellars of the opera house, to the deepest most wretched parts of that theater, and found that in seven years nothing had been changed. He had never returned there, as far as I could tell. I could not read his writings and musings – I could not bear it – but I took them with me and shoved them in the back of my closet, afraid of them. I writhed in turmoil each night, barring my door in one moment, and leaving my bedroom window unlocked in the next, knowing he would come. I felt it, as one does a train when it is bearing down upon them on the tracks, or as a fish does that is caught in a net, bound for someone's fire. I knew, with every fiber of my _being_, that he would come for me.

And yet, still, he did not come.

# # #

My darlings, did you miss me? I have returned.

Sort of.

I wanted to let you know that I am republishing my old stories on Amazon as The Phantom Romance Series. I'm not sure if all of them will make it, but The Ruse has been published under the title _**Beauty and the Phantom **_by Harper Helton (me). I'd love to hear from some of you! Eventually the titles will be added to Kindle Unlimited, so if you have a subscription then you will be able to read them for free.

I started writing this story,_** The Shaded Soul**_, several years ago but never quite finished it. Maybe this will give me the motivation I need to post here. If I publish this one to Amazon it will be the last story in the series.

Since FF will not let me post links, be sure to follow me on FB (just search HarperHeltonWrites), IG, Twitter, sign up for my newsletter, all that good stuff, because I'll be doing giveaways and, well, stuff. Stuff is good, right?


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

_Four years later_

"Happy Birthday, Father!" I exclaimed, reaching up to press a kiss to Edmond, the Comte de Chagny's cheeks. "Here is your gift, but do not open it just yet. You must open Martine's gift first."

Martine Coutelan, Raoul's older sister, stepped forward and gave her father a less exuberant kiss on each cheek, then handed him her gift with little fanfare. She was a beautiful woman, but hers was a cold and unapproachable beauty, and she wore it like a cloak. Nothing got beneath her skin, and nothing ever would. She glanced at me indifferently and waited for her father to open his present.

"Ah, my girls, you should not have," Edmond said quietly. "I did not anticipate celebrating the occasion this year."

Martine's lips tightened briefly, but she said not a word of comfort. I found myself constantly feeding the empty spaces in conversation when she was around, especially the last year since she had lost her mother, and Edmond, his wife.

"Not a celebration," I interjected softly. "Merely marking this moment. We did not want you to spend today alone, Edmond. Karine would have expected us to keep you entertained today."

"Bah! I am only getting older," he said. His eyes grew moist, and he glanced away from us both. "Thank you, girls. It means more to me than I can ever say, that you are here."

I crouched down at his side and covered his gnarled hand with my own, and pressed a small kiss across the back of it. My heart broke for him for the thousandth time, and I wondered how much more he could take. I had received another letter that very morning, and it burned inside the pocket of my dress. It had been almost a year since the first one had come, and I had said not a word to anyone. I wanted to confront him on my own. I wanted to look into his eyes and demand an answer—before I put an end to his hold over me forever.

"Open your present, Father," I whispered encouragingly.

Edmond smiled down at me fondly and reached for Martine's gift, unwrapped the paper slowly, and then stared in confusion for a moment at what he beheld.

I smiled instantly and leapt towards Martine, forgetting completely her aversion to embraces.

"Congratulations!" I shouted at her, squeezing her tightly. "Oh, Martine! This is a happy occasion! And now we have a reason to celebrate!"

"Ahh," Martine replied, patting me on the back in an awkward rhythm. "Thank you, Christine."

"Is this," Edmond paused, "a child's toy?"

I released Martine, feeling envious and excited for her at the same time. She nodded, a small smile beginning to creep across her features.

"Y-yes, Papa," she said hesitantly.

Edmond's eyes closed, and he too began to smile, yet it was such a painful smile that I knew the moment was as sweet as it was bittersweet. Karine had long lamented her lack of grandchildren, and now she would never know any of them, or they her. They had chosen not to acknowledge the one they had, but I brushed thoughts of that child aside. "I am very glad of that. Congratulations daughter. You will tell Henri I am very pleased with him, now that he is giving me a grandson or granddaughter to cherish."

"Thank you," Martine replied, her face returning to its normal stoic self.

I felt, not for the first time, out of place among the refined blue-blooded de Chagny family. Karine had been the lifeblood and veins of the family, and her family grieved for her in their own ways. They, and she, had grieved for Raoul quite differently. Where I had become a despondent, slightly mad person who roamed their hallways at night, searching in the shadows for a phantom, Karine and Edmond had thrown themselves into seclusion together and had come through the darkness stronger. Martine had been, well, Martine. She was ever unchanging and unemotional, except for a few quiet tears at Raoul's funeral. She had been a pale and silent figure at Karine's, looking as fragile as a dark glass you could not see through, but certain to shatter if touched. I had not dared touch or comfort her, in any way. I did not grieve quietly for Raoul. I wailed, raged, and screamed until Karine forced a dosage of laudanum upon me and kept me in a stupor for nearly a year. There are still some nights that I crave the sweet sickly numbness to help me forget, or take the edge off. I resist, knowing what I could become if I do not.

"And what do we have here?" Edmond asked, moving on to my gift.

I held my breath, hoping that the hours I spent searching for the perfect one had been fruitful. Edmond had a unique collection of timepieces from the world over, and many of them given to him by Raoul. Each year, with the exception of the first year after Raoul's death, I had continued the tradition. Raoul had shown me the very best shops to find these novelties, and I loved doing this for him each year. It always seemed to make Edmond happy, and this time was no exception.

"It's an 1806 Gallet & Cie, with ivory and gold inlay. The shopkeeper said it once belonged to the duchy of Vastmanland, who lost it in a card game to Wellington, who misplaced it on the battlefield at Waterloo." I tried to keep a straight face as I explained this to him, and for a moment, he kept one too.

"Ah," he said, "but how did Napoleon lose it?"

I laughed, as this was all part of the tradition. I did not buy the most beautiful watch. I went after the shopkeeper's tale—the one who would sell his mother's soul, and swear to the devil, the truth behind how he had acquired something.

"It was just when he leaned over the ship on his way to the island of Elba, that it slipped out of his pocket, and a fish ate it. A fisherman, seeing what had happened, dove down and caught the fish, but he could not paddle fast enough to catch the Emperor's ship to return it. It has been passed down through the family ever since."

It was, by the standards of some of Edmond's other watches, a rather modest tale.

"Ah, well if that is the case," he said with a laugh, "it will make a lovely addition to my collection. Even if it did belong to Napoleon, the old devil. Thank you, Christine."

He stood up to embrace me, patting me heartily on the back.

"Now Martine, about…" he said, looking around. "Well. Where did she go?"

The room was empty except for Edmond and I. The child's toy lay forgotten on the table.

"Probably morning sickness," Edmond confided with a wink.

I smiled weakly, wondering if I might have upset her by intruding on a precious moment with her father. I had certainly never been Raoul's sisters' favorite person, and I understood that I was only Edmond's daughter-in-law, but Edmond had needed more than the cool and vacant stare of his natural daughter. He had needed to laugh, and I was always able to draw a smile from him. Always.

Martine returned to us ten minutes later, looking slightly disheveled, but otherwise no worse for wear. I decided to just quietly step back and allow them to enjoy one another's company. I withdrew the envelope from my pocket as Edmond regaled his daughter with stories of his first year as a father, which seemed to give him more joy than sadness. I glanced down at the black scrawl that was becoming a poison in my life.

Your Juliette needs some fine-tuning. When next we meet, I will correct your errors. Perhaps it will be sooner than you think, darling Christine.

It was signed as always, simply 'O.G.', with nothing else attached. He had sent flowers after Roméo et Juliette, but I had received so many roses that Erik's had not stood out to me until the next day. They had been tied with a black silk ribbon and were the most beautiful flowers in the room. I could not believe that I had missed them, and I wondered later if he had not put them there well after my performance on purpose. He slunk around the opera house again, though it did not seem to possess all of his time now. To my knowledge, there were no tricks being played on anyone, and the new managers had not received demands for money. I was not a full-time performer there in any case, merely completed the productions for the composers who wished to work with me, and nothing more. I refused to sleep beneath the opera house roof and spent no longer inside the building than was absolutely necessary.

I suppose I would have allowed him to continue taunting me if I had not realized how empty my life had become, and how terrified I truly was. I had been widowed for four years. I was lonely and wanted a companion. Not a husband—I was not certain I wished to ever get married again, but I wanted to be kissed again, and cherished. I wanted to feel loved, and to love someone in return.

My anger propelled me forward, and I decided that I would no longer allow Erik to torment me from the shadows. He wanted me to find him, and find him I would do.


End file.
